Summary 
Outdoor production effectively modernized to Mussolini's 1930s Italy. Shylock a businessman in a Fascist Christian culture of mobsters, drunken whore mongers, transvestites, and cross-dressers. Gender-bent and cross-dressed roles - Portia is a man and Antonio is a woman - complicate the relationships. Disturbing and powerful with jarring alternations between comedy and drama.
Design
Directed by Joshua Sobol. Set by Edna Sobol . Costumes by Dorothy Marshall Englis. Lights by Julie Mack. Sound by Aaron Paolucci.
Cast
Phillip Burgess (Morocco), Tandy Croyn (Antonio), Scott Cummins (Bassanio), Thomas Clinton Haynes (Arragon), Brad Eric Johnson (Lorenzo), Kathleen Logelin (Jessica), David Kortemeier (Duke), Rebecca Maclean (Nerissa), Roderick Peeples (Shylock), Bruch Reed (Portia), Don Smith (Gratiano), Jesse Weaver (Launcelot).
Analysis
Director Joshua Sobol modernizes The Merchant of Venice to 1930s Fascist Italy. The supposedly "good" Christians are elitist gangsters with Italian accents who wear sleek black suits, smoke cigarettes, wield bottles and flasks of liquor, and brandish handguns. A large banner of Benito Mussolini drapes a wall at stage left. Shylock and Jessica subsist in this society, and when a pack of Christian hoodlums spray paint the Star of David and the condemnation of "Jew" across their door, Launcelot chases them away by barking like an attack dog.
An angled boardwalk lines the downstage perimeter like a Venetian pier, floor lighting along its sides, leading into a tunnel between sections of audience. The floor suggests a gold and black checkerboard, with black doors and gold columns beneath a balcony. Above, walls of burnished maroon brick feature black window shutters and rise at distorted angles to represent Shylock's home. Below, Portia's opulent residence is indicated by glittering gold drapery. When she and Nerissa arrive, louvered doors spin to become the mirrored walls of Portia's interior parlor. Recessed shelves hold the chests bequeathed to Portia by her father.
The production begins with Jewish-inflected dance music reminiscent of Fiddler on the Roof. Portia vainly poses in the mirrors with Nerissa at her side; Shylock and Jessica peer from a shuttered window in the balcony; and Antonio, wearing a fedora and sunglasses, stands in a cream-colored linen suit upon a rooftop at stage left. Bassanio enters with a drunken lurch, laughing and carousing with two harlots at center stage.
Antonio, portrayed by female Tandy Cronyn as a slight but not effeminate merchant, descends for 1.1 and is greeted as a popular gentleman. Cronyn offers Gratiano cigarettes from her gold case, then jealously wipes lipstick from Bassanio's face with a handkerchief. Antonio and Bassanio feign throwing punches to seal the granting of another loan. Their relationship seems sexual, albeit subdued in public.
Sobol also bends genders by casting male Bruch Reed as a narcissistic Portia. During 1.2. Reed adorns himself with silk scarves handed him by curly-haired Nerissa, chatting and posing in the mirrors. The cross-dressing is acknowledged - this is a man pretending to be a woman - when Reed mentions he is his "father's only living (pause) daughter," then laughs. When Nerissa mentions Bassanio as a suitor, she playfully binds Reed's Portia by wrapping "her" within a long scarf.
With the Christian characters represented as political fascists, violent crime lords, drunken whore mongers, transvestite money lenders, and cross-dressing society mavens, Roderick Peeples portrays Shylock as a victimized businessman. In a trimmed beard and wearing a vest over a work shirt with watch and chain, Shylock in 1.3 cleans a stack of musty books with a feather duster. When asked for a loan, he blows a cloud of dust at Bassanio but agrees, and when Bassanio offers to share a meal, Antonio waves "no" from the side of the stage. Shylock attempts to embrace the two Venetians, but when Antonio separates himself in disgust, the unoffended Shylock's offer of "a pound of flesh" as bond seems a friendly joke.
Portia's racism is evident during the 2.1 sequence with the dark-skinned Prince of Morocco. She poses in a flowered dress, guarded by soldiers with rifles, as the Prince selects the gold casket. Insulted by the bobble-head doll that mocks him from within the casket, he draws a scimitar and lifts a small soldier off the ground by her neck, threatening violence. One of the guards crosses himself for protection from the infidel.
As comical soldiers change the set for 2.2, Launcelot dances and drinks while cleaning the graffiti from Shylock's door in the balcony, then accidentally spits liquor upon the emerging Bassanio. Launcelot's conscience - as well as Old Gobbo - are oddly played by an actor with a sock puppet he wears over his hand. The manic Launcelot disturbs, his humor a contrast to the hatred around him, and his eagerness to be employed by the Christian Bassanio is extended vaudeville comedy. Bassanio sharply whistles and slaps a money bill onto Launcelot's perspiring forehead to halt him, but Launcelot resumes immediately, hitting the back of Bassanio's knee to raise his leg so he can wipe his shoe, chasing an imaginary fly and "eating" it, then escaping the Jew's employ upon a pretend bicycle with an apple in his mouth.
Jessica's love for Lorenzo never seems in doubt, although she and Shylock have a "scripted" conversation in 2.3, with knowing glances at the supposedly concealed Launcelot. Her profligate spending, as well as the loss of some of Antonio's ships at sea, are a creation of Shylock to deceive the Christians. Lorenzo is positively portrayed - in inspired casting, Christian Lorenzo and Jewish Jessica are played by the same actors as the Festival's doomed Romeo and Juliet - but his friends are typical ruffians, making lewd gestures as the two kiss in 2.3, waving handguns during the 2.4 masque, and relieving themselves on a wall while they smoke cigarettes and toss a flask back and forth during 2.8.
Sobol expertly juxtaposes silly comedy with violent dramatics. The Prince of Arragon, unworthy of Portia, is represented in 2.9 as a speed-talking little buffoon in a handlebar mustache, wearing a red sash and white gloves. To humiliate him, he is strip-searched by Portia's guards, who reveal black silk bloomers. He reads the scroll from the silver casket at an unintelligibly fast speed - blinking rapidly at "the portrait of a blinking idiot" - then tucks the scroll into his bloomers and leaps into Portia's arms like a child. When he departs, a telegram is delivered by a tap-dancing Western Union employee. Violence, however, resumes in 3.1 as Shylock, assaulted upon the downstage pier, disarms the two men who threaten him. Peeples delivers the "do we not bleed" speech with pistols pointed at each man's head as they cower in fear. When they flee, he seems as if he will shoot and kill them, but he is halted by the arrival of another messenger.
Sobol follows the ugly scene with an odd sequence that plays as if culled from a 1940s wartime romance movie. Bassanio, wearing a white tuxedo, arrives for 3.2 to the sound effect of a roaring motorcycle engine. Portia, in a red gown that billows in the summer breeze, stands beside him as he prepares to select a casket. Armed soldiers abound, and Gratiano and Nerissa flirt from opposite sides of the stage, cooing and waving. After Bassanio chooses the lead casket, Portia breaks into song, and Bassanio snaps his fingers, drums on the casket lid, then joins her singing. Nerissa and Gratiano, who had been embracing during the song, passionately kiss and grope each other, but Bassanio and Portia tentatively kiss, his relationship with Antonio a deterrent. The letter from Antonio concludes the first act, with Cronyn standing elevated at stage left to "read" the desperate plea. Bassanio then rushes offstage to help the merchant, but returns a moment later, having forgotten - pointedly - to bring his betrothed, Portia, with him.
Martial Italian music plays during intermission, and 3.3 begins with a manacled Antonio being led to prison in the balcony. Bassanio rushes onstage - looking rather absurd in a white tuxedo but wearing a leather motorcycle skull-cap with driving goggles - and waves Portia's money at the jailer for Antonio's release. The relationship between Bassanio and Antonio is obviously carnal and apparently homosexual: their 3.3 embrace causes the jailer to groan in revulsion, and when Portia arrives, she stands offstage, fuming with jealousy.
Reed's Portia resolves to appear at the trial as a man, and Reed removes his wig, falsies and dress. The 4.1 trial is disturbingly Fascist: it begins with militaristic music, and footlights shine along the downstage boardwalk; the Duke, a military dictator in dress uniform, gives open-palmed salutes to his retinue of black-clad soldiers; another image of Mussolini is projected against the wall at stage right; and a chanting mob of citizens take positions throughout the audience. Throughout the trial, Shylock confidently picks his fingernails with a large knife, cleaning the blade across the heel of his shoe.
Portia, as the Paduan lawyer, dominates the scene: obviously convincing as a man, she shakes hands and waves as if a politician running for office; she works the crowd into a frenzy, inspiring several in the mob to draw pistols against Shylock; she moves the crowd to chant "Dead! Dead!" until the Duke gives a thumbs-up signal indicating Shylock must live; and Bassanio gives a double take when he passes her in "disguise." Bassanio further incites the crowd against Shylock - "to do a great right, do a little wrong!" - as the Christian crowd chants "The law! The law!" and becomes dangerous.
Sobol's dramatic flair and gripping depiction of mob mentality highlight the conclusion. The crowd fights amongst themselves - a mother strikes her chanting daughter across the face - and when Portia's legal logic defeats Shylock, hand-held spotlights swirl as the crowd rushes Shylock and manhandles him over their shoulders. Gratiano drops a noose from the balcony for a lynching, but the Duke scatters the mob with pistol shots. Shylock finally acknowledges defeat, although he tears open Antonio's shirt to expose Cronyn's bare breasts ("I am content!") and reveal the merchant to be a woman.
The suddenly light mood of the concluding 5.1 interlude - Launcelot howling at the moon; Jessica and Lorenzo "dueling" with cocktail forks - gives way to disturbing images of still-rising European Fascism. Shylock's balcony home is ransacked by the mob, pillows sliced open so feathers fly and books dropped into a fiery pit for a public book burning. Sobol twists the usual happy conclusion, with its resolution of Portia and Nerissa's rings, into a disquieting finale. Bassanio, clearly this production's villain, mauls Portia and slaps her rudely on the behind, then throws her into a sofa in a rage when confronted with his loss of her ring. He blusters and paces, intimidating Portia, who reluctantly dances with Antonio. Their relationships seem sordid, the supposed heroes clearly decadent, and a profusion of images of Il Duce project against the walls, his Fascist beliefs endemic. The production ends as Shylock and Tubal are forcibly expelled from Venice, roughly shoved down the ramp, their luggage searched and strewn behind them.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.20, No.4, Fall 2002.